Computer virtualization is a technique that involves encapsulating a representation of a physical computing machine platform into a virtual machine (VM) that is executed under the control of virtualization software running on hardware computing platforms (also referred to herein as “hosts” or “servers”). A group of hardware computing platforms may be organized as a cluster to provide hardware resources, such as memory, central processing units (CPUs) and so on, for virtual machines.
For virtual machines running in a group of hardware computing platform (for example, as a cluster), one or more redundant hardware computing platforms may be provided as a redundant host, available for selective use, for example, as a spare host (for example, to provide a high availability (HA) cluster). Although the redundant host will be live or active in the cluster, the redundant host will be awaiting a trigger event, to be utilized to host one or more virtual machines. As an example, the trigger event may be a failure, network isolation or improper operation of one or more of hosts in the cluster. When the redundant host is not configured as a host for virtual machines, resources of the redundant host, for example, memory resources may be underutilized.
The drawings described herein are for illustration purposes only and are not intended to limit the scope of the present subject matter in any way.